Rail freight operators in France have been urged to “dare to do” if they want to capture the attention of public institutions and enhance their appeal to shippers. According to Alexandre Gallo, head of DB Cargo France and President of French rail association AFRA, it is necessary to take some risks for the industry to strengthen its position and not lose out on subsidies.
Speaking at the annual conference of industry body, Objectif-OFP, Gallo acknowledged that a major handicap facing the French sector continues to be the limited amount of “residual capacity” on a lack of flexibility to either obtain train paths at the last minute or for the launch of new services. But overall, the current environment for rail freight is rather auspicious, in his opinion.
“We’ve got shippers who want to work with us and there is a wide range of public aid available to the sector which is in place to restore a certain economic balance (with road haulage). For example, there are subsidies for operations, start-up grants and energy saving certificates for the purchase of equipment such as swap bodies and wagons. And I’m confident that at some point we’ll be able to obtain financing for locomotives, as is the case in Spain and other European countries,” he explained.
Rolling highway subsidies are already gone
“But if we do nothing, if we don’t develop anything, if we don’t show the public authorities that we’re capable of transforming these operating subsidies into real traffic growth, if we don’t take the risk, these subsidies may not be renewed.” He highlighted annual subsidies totalling 16 million euros for the launch of so-called “rolling highways” which were no longer on the table. “And why weren’t they renewed? No doubt because we, as a sector, were not able to justify the launch of such services and this amounts to opportunities missed.”
‘Look for new corridors’
Gallo underlined the need for a rail freight offering based on “innovation’ and “new solutions” for shippers. “Is reinforcing services on a north-south rail corridor between south-eastern and northern France really the direction we want to give to rail freight development today and for which there will always be the same shippers and the same transporters?”
He pointed to Brittany-based family-owned road haulage and logistics company, Lahaye Global Logistics who last year had “taken the risk” to launch a combined transport service running on France’s west-east rail corridor between Rennes and Lille and which today is carrying a broad range of consumer and industrial goods.
The service is pitched largely at ocean freight shippers in Brittany and the wider western France region with the inland port of Lille providing connections to Northern Europe seaports such as Dunkirk, Zeebrugge, Antwerp, and Rotterdam. But it is also catering for demand for goods bound for and originating in the region around Lille.
More recently, Lahaye has taken a further step on France’s under-used west-east rail freight corridor, with its subsidiary, Be Modal, in association with MGE Intermodal. Last month, they launched a weekly round-trip service between Rennes and Blainville-sur-l’Eau, situated in proximity to Nancy. “This is the kind of approach, a departure from the tried and trusted, that needs to be encouraged.”
Learn from shipping lines
Continuing his emphasis on innovation and thinking outside the box, Gallo said that rail freight operators could learn a lot from the ocean shipping lines, particularly in terms of the “visibility” of their services and the culture of co-operation and alliances. “As soon as they (the shipping lines) have the idea of launching a new service, they group together – two, three, four companies, each contributing one, two, three ships. The capacity is shared in proportion to what they bring to the service. This is an interesting model and one which we, collectively, as rail freight operators, should be able to implement.”